Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management

Paperback | November 1, 2005

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While many disciplines contribute to environmental conservation, there is little successful integration of science and social values. Arguing that the central problem in conservation is a lack of effective communication, Bryan Norton shows in Sustainability how current linguistic resources discourage any shared, multidisciplinary public deliberation over environmental goals and policy. In response, Norton develops a new, interdisciplinary approach to defining sustainability—the cornerstone of environmental policy—using philosophical and linguistic analyses to create a nonideological vocabulary that can accommodate scientific and evaluative environmental discourse.

Emphasizing cooperation and adaptation through social learning, Norton provides a practical framework that encourages an experimental approach to language clarification and problem formulation, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to creating solutions. By moving beyond the scientific arena to acknowledge the importance of public discourse, Sustainability offers an entirely novel approach to environmentalism.

About The Author

Bryan G. Norton is professor of philosophy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of Linguistic Frameworks and Ontology, Why Preserve Natural Variety? and Toward Unity among Environmentalists, and the editor of The Preservation of Species.

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Table of Contents

Preface: Beyond IdeologyA Note to the Busy Reader: Some Shorter Paths

Chapter 1 An Innocent at EPA1.1 The Old EPA Building1.2 Towers of Babel: The Structural Problems at EPA1.3 The Costs of Not Being Able to Get There from Here (Conceptually)1.4 Hijinks and Political Hijackings

Part I: Setting the Stage for Adaptive ManagementChapter 2 Language as Our Environment2.1 Introduction: The Importance of Language2.2 Of Hedgehogs and Foxes2.3 Progressivism, Pragmatism, and the Method of Experience2.4 Environmental Pragmatism and Action-Based LogicChapter 3 Epistemology and Adaptive Management3.1 Aldo Leopold and Adaptive Management3.2 What Is Adaptive Management?3.3 Uncertainty, Objectivity, and Sustainability3.4 A Pragmatist Epistemology for Adaptive Management3.5 Uncertainty, Pragmatism, and Mission-Oriented Science3.6 How Adaptive Management Is AdaptiveChapter 4 Interlude: Removing Barriers to Integrative Solutions4.1 Avoiding Ideology by Rethinking Environmental Problems4.2 Overcoming the Serial Approach to Environmental Science and Policy

Part II: Value Pluralism and CooperationChapter 5 Where We Are and Where We Want to Be5.1 The Practical Problem about Theory5.2 Four Problems of Environmental Values5.3 Where We Are: A Beginning-of-the-Century Look at Environmental Ethics5.4 Economism as an Ontological Theory5.5 Breaking the Spell of Economism and IV Theory5.6 Pluralism and Adaptive Management: What the Study of Environmental Values Could BeChapter 6 Re-modeling Nature as Valued6.1 Radical, but How New?6.2 A Naturalistic Method and a Procedure6.3 Re-modeling Nature: Learning to Think like a Mountain6.4 Hierarchy Theory and Multiscalar ManagementChapter 7 Environmental Values as Community Commitments7.1 Public Goods and Communal Goods7.2 The Advantages of Democratic Experimentalism7.3 Environmental Problems as Problems of Cooperative Behavior7.4 Discourse Ethics7.5 Experimental Pluralism: Naturalism and Environmental ValuesChapter 8 Sustainability and Our Obligations to Future Generations8.1 Intertemporal Ethics8.2 Strong versus Weak Sustainability8.3 Philosophers and the Grand Simplification8.4 Grandly Oversimplified?8.5 Passmore and Shared Moral Communities8.6 What We Owe the Future8.7 The Logic of Intergenerational ObligationChapter 9 Environmental Values and Community Goals9.1 A Schematic Definition of Sustainability9.2 A Catalog of Sustainability Values9.3 Beyond the Fact-Value Divide9.4 Choosing Indicators as Community Self-Definition

Part III: Integrated Environmental ActionChapter 10 Improving the Decision Process10.1 Decision Analysis and Community-Based Decision Making10.2 What Does Not Work: The Red Book10.3 Heading in the Right Direction: The Changing Field of Decision Science10.4 Getting It Mostly Right: Understanding Risk10.5 The Two Phases Revisited: Putting Multicriteria Analysis to WorkChapter 11 Disciplinary Stew11.1 Beyond Towering11.2 Philosophical Analysis and Policy Choice11.3 Scale and Value: The Key to It All11.4 Disciplinary Stew: The Prospects for an Integrated Environmental Science11.5 Environmental Evaluation: A Fresh Start in the World of What-IfChapter 12 Integrated Environmental Analysis and Action12.1 Conservation: Moral Crusade or Environmental Public Philosophy?12.2 An Alternative: The Dutch System12.3 EPA and Environmental Policy Today: A Report Card12.4 Constitutive Values and Constitutional Environmentalism12.5 Problem-Solving Environmentalism12.6 Seeking Convergence12.7 Ecology and OpportunityAppendix Justifying the MethodA.1 Philosophy's AbdicationA.2 The Rise of Linguistic Philosophy: Its Inevitability and MeaningA.3 The Rise and Transformation of Logical Empiricism, aka PositivismA.4 Pragmatism: The New Way ForwardA.5 Pragmatism and Environmental PolicyA.6 Philosophy's Role: An EpilogueNotesIndex